Watch: The unlikely Tory rebel said he was 'not very concerned about knifes being out for me'.

Tory MPs who know Dominic Grieve well say they have never seen him so angry as in the past week or so.

The former attorney-general is also past caring about what colleagues such as Nadine Dorries think, he made clear last night.

The government suffered an embarrassing defeat last night as 11 Conservatives defied their party whip to vote in favour of Grieve's amendment calling for MPs to be given a meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal.

There were then angry calls for the 11 rebels to be kicked out of the Conservative party. "They should be deselected and never allowed to stand as a Tory MP, ever again," raged Dorries on Twitter. For good measure, the 47-time rebel also accused Grieve of “treachery” and questioned his fitness to chair the Intelligence and Security Committee.

“Tory Brexiteers went Full Momentum last night and called for the rebels to be booted out of parliament,” stated POLITICO’s Jack Blanchard in his London Playbook memo.

But speaking on BBC Newsnight, Grieve - who has only previously rebelled on HS2 - refused to be intimidated by Dorries or any other Brexiteers.

He said: “I am not very concerned about knifes being out for me. I’m in parliament to do my duty by my constituents and my country. Knifes can be anywhere, I’m not going to be bothered by that in any way at all.

“What I am is intent on trying to support the government in trying to do the right thing. And the right thing is carrying out Brexit in an orderly, sensible way which has a proper process to it and which enables and that’s what I’ll continue to do.

“I’m sorry to hear if colleagues think so ill of me but it’s not going to affect what I do one jot.”

Meanwhile Dorries later defended her position, stating: "I’ve been a rebel myself, but never when a Marxist government was knocking at the door."

“I’m not very concerned about knives being out for me” - Dominic Grieve MP says the right thing is to carry out Brexit in an orderly and sensible way #newsnight[1]pic.twitter.com/uWUDj60uIJ[2]